March 2020
AW AMONG WORLDS
Kintsugi The Art of Repairing the Broken
AMONG WORLDS
MARCH 2020 • VOLUME 20 • NUMBER 2
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ARTICLES
Broken Isn’t Enough
Beth Matheson
From the Director The Art of Repairing the Broken Michael Pollock
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Writing Your Kintsugi Jo Parfitt
“It’s only when the straight line breaks and heals a little crooked that you ever see the grace.” Andrew Peterson “We Will Survive” from The Burning Edge of Dawn, 2015
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Unpacking My Identity Suitcase Lauren Wells
Kintsugi A Japanese method for repairing broken ceramics with a special lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum
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The Power of Sharing Our Story Anisha Abraham
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Expanding the Whole Through Brokenness Danielle Pruitt Cummings
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Kintsugi As Process Rachel Hicks
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Book Review The Storyteller’s Beads Cheryl Skupa
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There is No Place Like Home…But Where Would That Be? Emma Arden Farmer
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A Cracked Mug— On Loss and Life
TCK Definition An individual who, having spent a significant part of the developmental years in a culture other than the parents’ cultures, while not having full ownership of any. Elements from each culture are incorporated into the life experience, but the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar experience. ~David C. Pollock
Marilyn Gardner
Editor: Rachel Hicks
THE MISSION OF AMONG WORLDS IS TO ENCOURAGE ADULT TCKS AND OTHER GLOBAL NOMADS BY ADDRESSING Graphic Designer: Laurel Fleming REAL NEEDS THROUGH RELEVANT ISSUES, TOPICS, AND Digital Publishing: Bret Taylor RESOURCES. Copy Editor: Riah Solomon
AMONG WORLDS ©2020 (ISSN# 1538-75180) IS PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY INTERACTION INTERNATIONAL, 1516 PECK ST, MUSKEGON, MI 49442 USA. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE PRIOR PERMISSION FROM THE PUBLISHER. WE LOVE WORKING WITH INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS AND NGOS AND WILL NEGOTIATE A RATE THAT WORKS WITHIN YOUR BUDGET. CONTACT US AT AMONGWORLDS@INTERACTIONINTL.ORG OR CALL +1-630-653-8780. PRINTED VERSIONS OF SOME ISSUES MAY BE PURCHASED AT WWW.INTERACTIONINTL.ORG FOR $6 USD PLUS SHIPPING AND HANDLING. CONTACT US REGARDING INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING OR DISCOUNTS WHEN PURCHASING FIVE OR MORE ISSUES. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN AMONG WORLDS DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEW OF AMONG WORLDS OR INTERACTION INTERNATIONAL.
Letter from the Editor
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elcome home, friends. I can say that with confidence to you, our readers, because you—more than most—are able to hold more than one “home” in your hearts. It is our hope that Among Worlds becomes one of your special “homes”—a place where people “get” you, where you don’t have to explain your confusing background, your ambiguous accent, or your “fusion” fashion choices. We hope that in this family your stories will be attended to with interest and that among these pages you will discover long-lost kin. May you feel renewed and strengthened after spending time with us to go back into this glorious world grateful for and proud of your TCK heritage. I am blessed to be a second-generation TCK raising third-generation TCKs. However, this life that I would never trade for another includes some aches and pains that are particular to a globally mobile life. I don’t need to rehash them—you know them well. Sometimes I see my kids struggling with similar things—the ache of long-distance friendships, the hidden-immigrant syndrome of not feeling a sense of belonging in
their “home” country, the restlessness and “itchy feet.” Thank God we can talk about it together—we understand each other in this home, and that goes a long way toward healing. If home is where we are “stitched up” when we break, then this particular issue might do some mending for you. The Japanese art of kintsugi is a gift to the world, being so rich in analogy and metaphor. When a dish or jar breaks, it is carefully pieced back together using a lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum powder. This process highlights the “scars”—it doesn’t hide them. The flaws in each piece are considered a beautiful part of its story, its history. In this issue, you’ll read tales of gratitude for what scars have taught, stories of beauty emerging from brokenness, and advice on how and why we shouldn’t just give up and sit among the broken shards. Danielle Pruitt Cummings shares how devastating circumstances can ultimately lead to a healthy place of reordered identity and priorities. TCK teen Emma Arden Farmer shows us how she’s pieced together her European and American selves in small ways, building bridges along the way. TCK Training Director
Lauren Wells helps us visualize unpacking the “identity suitcase” many of us carry around. And writing mentor and publisher Jo Parfitt coaches us to “write ugly” as a way of processing in the moment our pain and loss. Enjoy these stories and more in this issue. Research tells us that we TCKs experience much more loss, on average, than our peers who are not globally mobile. We can look at our lives and count the cracks. Our hope, though, is that you’ll come to the last page of this issue already beginning to experience the mending you need—and that your life will be all the more beautiful for your golden cracks. Personally, I am honored to have found a “home” at Among Worlds as editor, and I look forward to engaging with my TCK tribe as I hear your stories. So, welcome home to all of us! Love,
R achel
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FROM THE DIRECTOR
MICHAEL POLLOCK
The Art of Repairing the Broken Michael Pollock, Executive Director of Interaction International
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e are, all of us, broken. There is simply no way to walk this journey as human beings and not get dinged, scratched, cracked, dented, and sometimes, shattered. In my 52 trips
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around the sun I have come to understand “healing” as an ongoing process, simply because the battering of life is a constant. Even sleep has been shown to be a healing process from the ravages of the day. “TCKs generally experience more losses before the age of eighteen than most other people experience in their lifetime,” was a quote I grew up hearing from my father, Dave. My own story of losses bears out the truth that repair and healing are possible, and the new ‘vessel’ can be beautiful. When I left the US for Kenya at age eight it did not feel like a breaking—more like the start of a great adventure. However, when our planned six years shrank to three, and ran out, my twelve-year-old self felt smashed. My close friends (local and international), my classmates, teachers, caring adults—I lost them all. The foods I loved—mandazis, irio, getheri, chapatti, nyama choma, chai, and samosa—would be replaced. I would never climb the cedars,
explore the caves, chase game riding in the old LandRover, or play on the white sands of Diani Beach again. We even gave away our dog! In my early thirties there was a shattering time stemming from the death of my beloved older brother, Nate, my name-sake grandfather, and my dad in the short span of three years. There seemed to be shards of me everywhere. What then, brings healing and even beauty to the broken places of our lives? For me as a child there was the connection of family; a crisis in faith that led me to believe deeply that a caring God existed; the reforming of relationships in our new home in Vermont; and the realization over the years that my Kenya-life was not all gone, just changed. New eyes for the rearranged and restored pieces prepared me to say “yes” to taking our family to China on an adventure of our own. That nine-year journey held great draughts of joy, relationships, and life. The “trio-of-loss” years was also the period we left the US for China. The golden repairs took place in the deep love of my life-partner—my wife, Kristen; the presence of my three children; a renewed encounter with the present and living Christ; the powerful impact of the two caring communities that sent us out and received us in. Along the way I have benefitted greatly from wise guides: counselors, spiritual directors, mentors, and therapists who have affirmed my work towards wholeness. I accept that after those losses I will never be the same. Full stop. AND also I am able to embrace an ongoing process and marvel at the unique beauty created in the repairing process. Ultimately, I am grateful, even for the pain. Here at Interaction we hold firmly to hope in healing and to the belief that brokenness can be a pathway to beauty. #KintsugiLife
Nothing is ever truly broken—that’s the philosophy behind the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi, which repairs smashed pottery by using beautiful seams of gold.
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Broken Isn’t En
By Beth Ma
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nough
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let the plates fall—first a dusky blue one, and then spring green with a golden rim, followed by black-speckled crimson, cream and lavender, and dark cocoa brown. They made a pretty mess on the concrete patio until I swept up the pieces and stashed them on the top kitchen shelf. Our coffee table, roughly crafted from a local Papua New Guinean hardwood, was begging to be brightened with a ceramic mosaic, and now all I needed was a little glue and grout. But a few weeks later a difficult experience rocked our family, leading to our return to the US for counseling. We never went back. Those plates were a good metaphor for my heart, I realized as I sorted through our crisis and tried to make sense of yet another goodbye I didn’t choose. Broken pieces of myself had stayed behind when I unexpectedly left my childhood home in the southern Philippines, some got lost in my move from Ohio to North Carolina, and unnumbered shards were covered in deep Kentucky clay the day we buried my mom. And now some of my shattered bits, mingled with portions of my husband’s and kids’ hurting hearts, lay like they had been forgotten in the emerald highlands of the South Pacific. What do you do when you try to put your heart back together, only to realize some fragments are gone for good? Living among worlds, stretched across cultures and continents, is rich and beautiful—but it also leaves us torn and scattered. Brokenness is inevitable in the TCK life (and life in general), as people and places lay claim to sections of our MARCH 2020
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memories, whether we gave them willingly or they were taken by force. The reality of brokenness has become a socially acceptable—and even trendy— topic of conversation, with increasingly public discussions of mental health struggles, addictions, trauma, and abuse. And that’s wonderful! The freedom to talk about formerly hidden things has been a long time coming, especially in missions circles. For too many of us, though, the conversation doesn’t just begin with admitting the brokenness in our stories; that’s also where it ends. I often hear resignation and cynicism in exchanges between grown TCKs as they compare the losses, traumas, and wounds they’ve collected over the years. We do need those safe spaces to share the heartaches and questions only other global nomads are likely to grasp, where we can talk about struggles while they’re still in process. And I understand the temptation to give up reaching for wholeness with so many pieces of our hearts missing. Healing is hard, painful, exhausting work. So why should we pursue health? Why isn’t airing our brokenness enough? In my own fight for wholeness, I’ve found three major reasons to keep going: Brokenness creates more brokenness. My most profound wounds haven’t happened as a result of life circumstances. Yes, the transitions and goodbyes that were no one’s fault have been extremely painful, but I’ve been most broken by encounters with other people’s hidden, fractured edges—and, if I’m honest, my own shards, too. Loose, razor-edged pieces rattle around, damaging whatever they come in contact with and leaving casualties wherever they go. We have a 8
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responsibility to ourselves and the people around us to examine every fragment we still own, no matter who broke it, and figure out where it belongs. We’re far too valuable to be left in pieces on the top shelf. I believe that our Creator made us to reflect who he is and that we matter to him. Psalm 139, sometimes called the TCK psalm, describes this truth beautifully: You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. You know what I am going to say, even before I say it, LORD. You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head… You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. (Psalm 139:3–5, 13–14, New Living Translation)
Broken pieces of myself had stayed behind when I unexpectedly left my childhood home in the southern Philippines, some got lost in my move from Ohio to North Carolina, and unnumbered shards were covered in deep Kentucky clay the day we buried my mom.
God not only values us enough that he former shape when whole chunks of our hearts are simply gone? shaped us with care and purpose, but he We can’t. also pays tender attention to every detail We will never again look the way we of our days. If the most powerful being in the universe prizes us that much, we’re did before our breaking. Because we’re not supposed to. worth the effort it takes to seek wholeness. Before, we were regular old dishes. Healing is possible! I know that Now we’re becoming stunning works of TCKs represent a wide spectrum of art, skillfully mended and filled—not beliefs, but I can’t legitimately talk about with simple gold, like kintsugi pieces— moving from brokenness to wholeness but with God himself. As we let him without bringing my faith into it. The work in us, he pours his glory into all our Bible is the truest, most solid thing I gaps, bringing us an entirely new kind of know, so I believe what the prophet Isaiah wholeness. foretold about Jesus: No, we’ll never be the same. But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed (Isaiah 53:5, NLT). Jesus submitted himself to brokenness so he could ultimately break its power completely, setting us free to find healing through a relationship with him. What about those missing pieces, though? How can we be restored to our
Beth Matheson rocked culottes and a bowl cut during her childhood in the Philippines. She and her husband, Mike, have served since 2004 with Wycliffe Bible Translators, providing care and training for missionaries and their families in the US and Papua New Guinea. Beth is now a writer and podcast host for Wycliffe Women of the Word. https://www.wycliffe.org/women; https://www.rootsdowndeep.com
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Writing Your Kintsugi By Jo Parfitt
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his time last year, I was preparing for my opening keynote at the Families in Global Transition (FIGT) conference. I had been asked to speak on the subject of connecting, and as a writer of books, article, poetry, and blogs, I knew I would speak about writing. Specifically, I would talk about how writing and sharing our stories connect us. Stories connect us to our inner selves and they connect us to other people. Interestingly, it was the metaphor of the kintsugi that first inspired my keynote. I loved how it showed that something broken became more precious when glued back together. It was not long before I realized that if each of the 10
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fragments of the Japanese porcelain item represented one of our stories, then the golden glue used to stick it back together was the sharing of those stories. It was not lost on me that the term pieces means a “piece of writing.”
affected the entire family was in no doubt. And yet, through those emails we developed a friendship and a knowledge of each other’s souls, deeper than could ever have been forged had we reserved our communication for the rare times we were in the same country and could meet face Sharing Is Caring to face. A couple of years earlier I had co-auIt was a learning for us both, but more thored and published a book with Terry than anything we realized the immense Anne Wilson called Monday Morning benefits of feeling able to share our stories Emails. In short, Terry Anne and I wrote and bare our souls in a safe space. We each other emails every week, writing discovered that each time we recounted candidly and with more than a little a sorry tale in writing, the act of writing vulnerability about our experiences overwas a therapy in itself. Negative emotions seas. We particularly focused on the effect reduced, immediately on that first writing that our decades abroad had had on our and then further each time that story was shared. We were intrigued, and I took it upon myself to see what research, if any, was out there. I discovered that in 2012, Brigham University conducted five studies into the effect sharing, verbally and in diary form, had on happiness. The studies concluded that writing about positive events boosts mood and that the subsequent sharing of the story increases that effect further. Both writing and speaking one’s stories have an enduring effect on the writer. Writing Ugly As a writing mentor and teacher, I have long extolled the benefits of writing five ATCKs, now in their twenties. In our about negative experiences—those expebook we shared openly about the mental riences that may threaten to break us, health and career challenges our sons had or at least cause a few cracks—and am a encountered and the very different ways firm believer in the value of writing when we had both chosen to help them through you are “bleeding.” I recommend writing the mire—me with counselling, therapy, freely and without fear of being read or and research; she with instinct and a judged about whatever is on your mind. mother’s love. That our choice to bring This is no time for perfectionism. It’s time children up overseas in several locations to write ugly. Sure, later, when some time MARCH 2020
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I created a writing programme to help people to record and preserve their precious stories, and I made a silver pendant with cracks of gold to celebrate the beauty and power of being broken. I call my kintsugi The Life Story Jar. has passed and you have more clarity on the situation, you can go back and polish your work. Whether your finished piece is for publication, for sharing with trusted friends and family, or just for you is immaterial; what matters is that you got it out. I once heard a psychologist speak at the Women’s International Networking Conference in Lausanne on just this topic. “If it doesn’t get out it goes down,” he said, indicating how unspoken truths can manifest in the body and cause illness. Today, that the body is influenced by our mind and our emotions is well researched and understood. While Terry Anne and I wrote our emails to each other, we each shared how vulnerable it felt to be living in the limbo of never knowing how long we would be 12
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in a location or where we might move to next. I shared of my father’s lapse into cancer and dementia, the breakdown of one my ATCKs, and the incredible highs and desperate lows of the mobile life we have chosen. We were united by our wounds yet buoyed by our recounting of the marvelous opportunities that had come our way. Interestingly, further research and experience have taught me that the benefits of writing down and ultimately sharing our stories occur first when we sit to write, again when we go back to reflect and edit, and then further when our stories are shared with another person. When that person goes on to listen and comment, too, then it is life-enhancing and liberating.
The Perfect Metaphor I believe that the metaphor of the kintsugi is the perfect illustration of how our stories become part of who we are—part of our identity—and that we feel validated when we are able to share them. In a sense, in a world where so many people struggle to feel they belong and to acknowledge their identity, writing and sharing stories is powerful. My father passed away last year aged 90. For his 90th birthday I put together a book of photographs and stories from his life. For the rest of the family, the book represents Pa in a physical way, keeping him alive in our thoughts. For the care home where he spent the last few months of his life, confused and weary, the nurses used the book to understand who this frail gentleman had been. Now they knew what to talk to him about. Taking all this into account, after my keynote speech, I went on to do something both accessible and tangible with my ideas. I created a writing programme to help people to record and preserve their precious stories, and I made a silver pendant with cracks of gold to celebrate the beauty and power of being broken. I call my kintsugi The Life Story Jar. You can find out more about it on my website at www.joparfitt. com and even try a lesson free of charge.
For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.” ~D.H. Lawrence
Jo Parfitt has been both an expat and a writer for more than thirty years, has written thirty-two books, and has mentored more than 300 new authors. She runs Summertime Publishing, specializing in books by and for people living overseas, and has continued to run a writers’ circle and to teach writing wherever she has lived in the world. In 2020, she launches a writing programme to help people write and preserve their precious stories. You can find out more and pick up a trial lesson at www.thelifestoryjar.com. Her websites are www.joparfitt.com and www.summertimepublishing.com.
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The Power of Sharing Our Story adapted from Raising Global Teens: Parenting in the 21st Century
By Anisha Abraham, MD, MPH
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e all have a story. My father came as a graduate student from southern India to the US on ninety-day trip aboard a Spanish cargo ship via Ellis Island. My mom, who was raised in India and Kuwait, set off to the US as a newly married bride after meeting my father once in their hometown and having an arranged marriage. My German father-in-law was an adolescent in the aftermath of World War II and felt first-hand the terrible guilt and silence that gripped his homeland. My mother-in-law recalls a difficult childhood move with her parents from East to West Berlin before the Berlin Wall was built (which then for years separated her from other family members).  Most of us have experienced change, transition, and different communities and cultures. According to a survey I have been conducting among cross-cultural kids, going through a move and defining identity/belonging are top concerns among teens. I recently spoke to a young, bubbly Swedish American teen who had lived in Sweden, Panama, and the US, and was visiting us while backpacking through Europe. She mentioned that she never really discussed her moves and distinct background with her peers or family, yet it is a very important part of who she is. With each move, there was a sense of anxiety and fear, particularly when coming to the US and starting high school. According to author Jo Parfitt, the Japanese art form known as kitsungi is an apt metaphor for our life experiences. Adapting to new surroundings or cultures and leaving old ones can be challenging. Kitsungi is a type of art in which porcelain which has been broken is put back together with golden glue. This type of jar is highly valued in Japan because of the many breaks and the glue that holds it together. In fact, it is more valuable than a perfect-looking porcelain jar. We all have many cracks, fissures, and patched-up areas in our lives.
Everyone has a story to share. Often, we don’t take account of how our story affects us. Shared stories can inspire, entertain, resonate, and provide relief. Unexpressed stories can fester and cause suffering and challenges with identity and belonging. Growing up as an Indian American in the US, I wondered where I really belonged. I recall visits to India, where despite looking like others, my poor command of my parents’ mother tongue prompted strangers to curiously ask, “Where are you from? You must not be Indian.” Likewise, in our small American hometown, I was on occasion asked, “Are you from India? You have really good English.” If a teen does not develop a clear sense of belonging, it can affect them significantly into adulthood. In my own work, when teens are unsure or vulnerable, they may look to others, such as their peers, for acceptance and to help them define who they should be, how they should look, and what they should do. For example, a poor sense of identity (and self-esteem), can put teens at risk for poor body image and eating disorders or using alcohol and drugs. Research supports these observations. For example, a US-based study conducted by Raquel Hoersting examines the relationship between a cross-culturally mobile childhood, identity, and self-esteem. The study indicates that those individuals reporting “cultural homelessness” had lower self-esteem scores. On the other hand, those reporting a higher level of belonging and cross-cultural identity had higher self-esteem and a lower sense of cultural homelessness.
Jo Parfitt suggests that we make our stories sacred, but not secret. Getting children to open up about their own stories is a powerful and valuable exercise in developing their own identity and expressing themselves. Whether it is writing, speaking, drawing, dancing, etc, there are so many ways to share our unique experiences. So now is the time to start asking yourself and your kids, “What is your story?” Anisha Abraham, MD, MPH is a pediatrician and teen health specialist based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and on faculty at the University of Amsterdam and Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC. Anisha works with teens, parents and organiztions globally using her 25 years of experience as a clinician, researcher, speaker, and educator. Anisha is a board member of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Her book, Raising Global Teens: Parenting in the 21st Century, will be published by Summertime Publishing in April. For more information, see https:// dranishaabraham.com/. . No place to call home: Cultural homelessness, self-esteem and cross-cultural identities, Raquel C. Hoersting, 2009: https://www.researchgate. net/publication/251508490_No_place_to_call_ home_Cultural_homelessness_self-esteem_and_ cross-cultural_identities 1
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Unpacking My Identity Suitcase Throughout my teenage and young adult years, the question “Who am I?” plagued me. My immediate answer, “It depends on the situation,” seemed to allude to an unhealthy way of living life. 16
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By Lauren Wells
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pressed on and tried not to consider the question too often, but when I gave birth to my first child, I felt an immense pressure to revisit it. To solve my identity mystery once and for all. As someone who works with TCKs, I knew that I had to walk this road before I could provide a map to other TCKs, and there my journey began with the idea of a suitcase. As TCKs, we carry around a suitcase of identities and strategically pull out and put on the one appropriate for each
situation. We wear each of them like they are a natural part of our being, and onlookers would never know otherwise. This is a survival skill that we develop to be accepted in our ever-changing environments. The first time I took my husband to Tanzania, East Africa, where I grew up, I walked confidently off the plane and into the crowded, muggy airport. I spoke Swahili to the greeters and immigration officers as I assertively made my way through. My husband looked over at me when we exited and said, “Wow, you are so outgoing when you speak Swahili!” He had only known the reserved, quiet, American version of his wife up until that moment. I had pulled out my African identity and it fit so comfortably—like a long-lost favorite pair of jeans. Sometimes, it was a change in accent that I would pull out of my identity suitcase. With expatriates from around the world, my accent changed to the multicultural intonations that I inherited during my time at an international school. It sounds like a strange mix of American, Australian, British, Irish, and African. But then I would put it away in the United States and return to my reserved nature and American accent (though the multicultural one would sometimes sneak out when I was tired, much to my dismay). I loved the layers of identity that I carried in my suitcase. They spoke to my diverse upbringing and connected me to other TCKs whose suitcases were packed much like mine. As I began to deconstruct my identity after my child was born, I realized, however, that MARCH 2020 MARCH 2020
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tucked within the beautiful layers there were other pieces that were unhealthy. These unhealthy layers needed to be sorted through before I could continue further into piecing together my identity. For a long time, I clung to them, convinced that they had to remain in my suitcase in order for me to still call myself a TCK. If I pulled them out and disposed of them, wouldn’t that undo my TCK identity? The first piece that I had to take a long look at was the part of my identity that refused to settle. At that point, I had lived in Oregon for four years—the longest I had lived anywhere. As the years increased, that piece of my identity fought to come out. It convincingly told me that if I put down roots, I was betraying my TCK identity. I needed to move, to go on another adventure. I couldn’t possibly settle here and still be a TCK. The second piece told me that if I developed deep relationships with people who had never left their passport country, I’d have to throw out my whole TCK identity. It was threatened by the idea that there could possibly be relationships worth pursuing outside of the TCK population. Finally, the suitcase said, “You have to choose one of these identities and throw out all of the remaining contents, or you are a fraud.” I had spent years trying to wear only one piece of my identity at a time. I believed that people in America wouldn’t understand me if I was outgoing and my multicultural accent slipped out. I believed people in Africa wouldn’t respect me if I was quiet and reserved, and I was convinced the TCK community wouldn’t accept me if I settled in one place and 18
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developed deep relationships with people native to my passport country. As I sorted through my complicated suitcase of identities, I came to realize that I didn’t need to walk around with a suitcase at all. By doing so, I was directly resisting one of the most incredible TCK traits—a beautifully complex identity. Instead of trying pull out the perfect version of myself for the situation, I began to display all of the pieces in various ways in any situation. Much to my surprise, others found beauty in that too. A few years and two children later, I am not ashamed to let my multicultural accent slip out or to wear bright African patterns in the US. I have allowed myself to settle, to grow roots, and to develop deep friendships with people who are not TCKs. I don’t worry about keeping pieces of myself hidden in a suitcase, but have experienced an amazing freedom in seeing that I am loved, accepted, and truly understood when I allow myself to be seen for the complex, layered individual that I am. Lauren Wells is the Founder and Director of TCK Training and author of Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids. She is an Adult Third Culture Kid (ATCK) from Tanzania, East Africa, and works with globally mobile families, specializing in practical, preventive care for Third Culture Kids. She regularly offers workshops, seminars, and other resources at TCKTraining.com.
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Expanding the Whole Through Brokenness By Danielle Pruit Cummings
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hen something breaks and is pieced back together, the story of the breaking becomes inherent to the object. The item is no longer only what it first was; it is also its mended, expanded version of wholeness. A main fissure that helped my wholeness expand was becoming acquainted with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). While certainly relevant and part of the national conversation in my passport country, the United States—which at the time involved headlines of Magic Johnson’s announcement and increasing awareness of LGBTQ+ healthcare needs— I as a sheltered thirteen-year-old was not savvy to the accelerating research and public stigma around that virus nor any other virus. That is, until my parents, brother, and I moved to Nairobi, Kenya. In accordance with my adolescent sense of invincibility, and removed from the moral-political contamination of
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emerging information in the States, HIV did not scare me. My mom was a registered nurse, and learning about the existence of HIV in Kenya was about as loaded as learning about the British word for grocery cart (trolley); I did not have an emotional value attached to the existence of a disease. Sometimes naivety is also liberation. In rapid succession, I learned about HIV—its existence, its prevalence, and then, its face. The last one broke me. Without treatment, 25 percent of babies born to HIV-positive mothers contract the virus. In other words, before today’s treatment options were discovered or circulated, at least three out of four babies were facing a typical HIV-negative lifespan without the presence of their mother. At that time, in the late nineties, I was told that the rate at which Kenyans were dying of HIV/AIDS was equivalent to a 747 plane going down each day: was
She embodies the concept that Japanese kintsugi artists practice‌ It neither defines the thing nor ruins the thing; it helps it become.
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conservative estimate of 500 people. I also told that I could only contract HIV if I mixed blood or had sex with someone with HIV. As a devout, conservative TCK missionary kid, I was neither sexually active nor was I getting into any permanent, blood-exchanging friendship pacts any time soon. I had no idea that while Kenya declared it a public health crisis, my own country was still awash with fear and unease about HIV and its contagion. I had no idea that people thought it transferred through sweat, toilet seats, or, in some cases, was a divine judgment against gay men. I might have never cared were it not for my three youngest siblings being added to our family through adoption. I might have never been broken of my ignorance. Two of them did not contract HIV from their biological mothers. One in seven people in Kenya at that time had HIV. After the adoption of my sister, our family fit the statistic. We were brokenhearted to learn that her HIV test was not indicating antibodies left over from her birth but indicated actual replicating cells. I remember my mom saying you never want to know what your child would die from. In the late nineties, the diagnosis felt like a catastrophic bookend; hopes and visions of her future “normal” life seemed too fantastic. Though too
I learned that I never wanted to be the person rejecting someone on the basis of their own brokenness. And I learned that brokenness doesn’t always break us.
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young to crawl, and the completing person in our family, my baby sister simultaneously introduced us to life and grief, wholeness and brokenness. Our grief was pronounced and complicated when news traveled to our home country and church. Having recently left the States, my connections had remained strong and I thought the world of “home.” We were all shocked when the church responded to my sister’s health and adoption negatively. As our relationship with its leadership unraveled on the basis of her HIV status, I felt tossed and spun, like a towel in a dryer. What had previously been “north” in my personal, faith, and social development became an adversary, unpredictable and unsafe. Not only was the future we had assumed for my sister full of question marks and holes, but our primary support system and authority structure was breaking apart. I remember my mom sitting on the floor crying. Water was running down the wall next to her because our roof top water tank was leaking. My dad was back in the States briefly to meet with the church and a professional mediator. The water tank and ceiling were not the only things disintegrating. Brokenness pushes us to greater depths of ourselves. The rawness of our emotion, the impulse to shut down or self-soothe by whatever means possible, the new scale by which we judge things significant or not—these new realities are all immediate and simultaneous. There are moments we wonder incredulously at the cars still driving by, the advertisements still barraging, and the birds still singing. How could life go on when life
as we know it has irrevocably changed? The bathroom floor, the steering wheel, and the pillowcase all receive the tears, cries, or punches too intimate, too unfurled for even the closest friends. We are plunged into a truthfulness about our fragility we can either embrace or spend the rest of our lives denying. Through a beloved baby’s HIV status, and a stateside reaction, I was baptized into a brokenness from which I never fully recovered. The breaking became part of the story; the whole expanded. It was the fault line that led to many different earthquakes and openings. As I learned the proper way of holding babies as a (much older) big sister, I learned the possibility of holding contradictory emotions like wonder and despair. I learned that fear drives many decisions. I learned that home was a movable object and people let you down. I learned that I identified with an excluded and stigmatized community now, and while I was further displaced socially, spiritually, and physically, I was also more grounded than before. I learned that I never wanted to be the person rejecting someone on the basis of their own brokenness. And I learned that brokenness doesn’t always break us. My sister started anti-retroviral drug therapy at the age of three. I was in my first year of university a world away and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Grief comes in waves; we deal with reality in pieces. The existence of medication was actually hopeful; the clinical need for it within her body was devastating. The unfolding story of my sister’s health and wellness, which is of course much more expansive than the virus
itself, has been a beautiful narrative. She is presently twenty years old, on scholarship at the same university I attended when she was a toddler. She has taken ownership of her own story and shared it generously to continue the deterioration of HIV stigma and misinformation. She embodies the concept that Japanese kintsugi artists practice: brokenness is not something to cover or hide but to attend to and leverage. It neither defines the thing nor ruins the thing; it helps it become. Today, as a hospital chaplain, I’ve had the opportunity to join the crying mother with the ceiling disintegrating around her. I feel capable of expanding and including new volume. First on my thank-you list in this learning is my adolescent initiation into living with HIV and being betrayed. Brokenness made me vulnerable to more brokenness, but along the way I lost some fear and gained connection. Is there anything else we could hope for?
Danielle Pruit Cummings became a TCK at age thirteen. An adoptee from South Korea, she moved from Oregon to Kenya with her family when she was in the eighth grade. She loves living among worlds in central Los Angeles. www.findwideplaces.com, https:// cct.biola.edu/people/Danielle-cummings/
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Kintsugi As Process Y
By Rachel Hicks
ou’re processing a whole life, aren’t you?” It was early summer, 2013, and my family and I were attending a one-week “debrief and renewal” experience for returning missionaries, hosted by MTI in Colorado. I was sitting in a comfortable chair in a quiet room. Everyone around me was busy writing. I was frozen—from the over-airconditioned room (why, Americans?) and from being overwhelmed at where to even start. Most people in the room were TCAs: third-culture adults (entirely different than adult TCKs; TCAs grew up in their passport countries and first lived abroad as adults). They were writing down reflections about how their time overseas had changed them. Our intuitive presenter/counselor/guide must have noticed how stuck I was. She knew I was a TCK. She came alongside me and whispered those words to me— You’re processing a whole life, aren’t you?
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Well, friends, the dam broke. (Not lived and people I’d been—didn’t seem to outwardly—I managed to contain the have much to do with each other at all; tears—but inwardly.) they were isolated sections of the river. It hit me in that moment that after: And the further down the river I go, the living in seven different countries; further behind I leave them. living in over twenty homes; I love kintsugi because not only is the surviving: political instability, riots, final product a complete whole, but the stampedes, earthquakes, multiple episodes points of breakage are highlighted, not of dysentery, groping and gawking by hidden. The piece is made stronger, more men on the streets, frequent electricity resilient, and more beautiful because of and water outages, swine flu, rickshaw those scars, not in spite of them. rides with drunk drivers, road trips as a In that cold room with those warm family of four on my dad’s Enfield Bullet hearts, I couldn’t see this. I didn’t have motorcycle, an evacuation by the US the words or the image to cling to. military, my own kids’ medical traumas, As I’ve gotten older, the scar I notice choking pollution, etc.; recurring the most in my life is a sense too many goodbyes to my global of profound loneliness, of alienation nomad friends; from those around me. Because of my being from everywhere and nowhere; frequent moves, I have rarely lived in a I simply didn’t know how to process how place long enough to have a shared history it had changed me. It had formed me, that nurtures deeper relationships. That broken me, strengthened, delighted, loneliness disappears on the rare occasions scared, confused, and intrigued me. when I get to meet up with my “lifers”— Simply, it had made me who I was. friends (usually TCKs or TCAs) who I wish in that moment I had known are friends for life, no matter how little about the art of kintsugi. Did you know that some kintsugi pieces are crafted by using discarded pottery pieces from various vessels? I would have drawn a picture of my life as a kintsugi jar—broken bits from various places and histories sealed together with gold. That’s a more deeply satisfying image to me than the one I was picturing in that moment: my life as a river with many little tributaries branching off of it in all directions. Those My family starting a seven-hour road trip in tributaries—all the places I’ve Northern India, ca. 1982.
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physical time we spend together. Lately I’ve begun to see how that scar, that brokenness, has helped me to be a better friend, to be more attentive to people in my life, more appreciative of the relationships I have. I’ve learned to stop grasping for what I think I need relationally and just accept and care for the relationships I have. That scar is now more lined in gold, and less painful. If we let it, brokenness can deepen us. I’m curious—how many of you have had the opportunity at some point in your life to go through a structured debriefing time, a time to reflect on the scars and the beauty of your TCK life? What “tools” might you have at your disposal as you take a kintsugi approach to the aspects of your TCK lives that have caused you pain? For me, as for others who have contributed their stories to this issue, writing can help. So can other creative disciplines. I often write poetry, but once I wrote a letter to my ACTK self while I was making dinner, and it was cathartic.
The piece is made stronger, more resilient, and more beautiful because of those scars, not in spite of them. Talking with a counselor who understands TCKs can be refreshing, healing, and liberating. Sometimes, time alone can be a tool. So can beauty. I’m not sure how it works—it’s a mystery—but sometimes being surrounded by natural beauty is healing. It leaves us somehow more whole. Many TCKs—myself included—find solace and healing through their faith, as some have testified in these pages. What have you found that helps? I hope that by reading each other’s stories here, and continuing the conversations online, we can learn from each other. We can share tools. If you started reading this issue wondering how any beauty can come from your scars, I hope that by the last page you at least have the beginnings of hope.
History repeats itself: my family’s mode of transportation in China, 2009.
Rachel Hicks is the editor of Among Worlds, and is also a second-generation TCK raising third-generation TCKs. She spent her childhood in India, Pakistan, Jordan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Hong Kong. As an adult, she lived with her family in Chengdu, China, repatriating to the US in mid-2013, where she now lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Rachel’s poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous journals. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the winner of the 2019 Briar Cliff Review Fiction Prize. She also works as a freelance copyeditor. Find her online at rachelehicks.com.
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BOOK REVIEW BY CHERYL SKUPA
The Storyteller’s Beads WRTTEN BY JANE KURTZ
S Hardcover: 160 pages Publisher: Gulliver Books; 1st edition (April 15, 1998) Language: English ISBN-10: 0152010742 ISBN-13: 978-0152010744
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everal years ago, in a small, rather dull thrift store, I was delighted to find a book I’d not read yet by TCK writer, Jane Kurtz. I’d once met Jane at a writers’ conference and enjoyed her books immensely, even reviewing one of them in Among Worlds. This new find, The Storyteller’s Beads, was a fiction account of an historical event—the Israeli airlift of Ethiopian Jews suffering from famine and war in the 1980s. “Operation Moses,” as it was called, was the first of the series of covert operations that began in 1985. These news items are vivid in my imagination because I was working at a Jewish retirement center during some of the airlifts, and they were written up in the Jewish newspaper and much talked about among the residents. Kurtz centers her novel about these events around the lives of two characters from different ethnic groups. Sahay, a young girl from the Kemant tribe, has lost most of her family to the Red Terror (a violent political repression). Now, with famine and the militia
group threatening them again, Sahay and her uncle must leave their village. In a different part of Ethiopia, Rahel, a young blind girl of Beta-Israel (House of Israel), also must leave her home as well as most of her family and join a group of fellow Ethiopian Jews going to Jerusalem, a land they know only in hopes, dreams, and stories handed down for generations. Both girls leave the only home in which they’ve ever lived, facing unknown dangers and an uncertain future. They also face prejudices by others and battle fears and false ideas within themselves. Sahay, well into her journey by foot, and weak with hunger, is pelted by rocks after asking a group of children for food. Sahay’s uncle explains,
hiraeth
(n.) Welsh a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.
The Amhara say the Kemant and Falasha are budas (have the evil eye). The Kemant say the Falasha are budas. Whenever misfortune comes, everyone looks for someone to blame. And these days, there is great misfortune throughout the country. (48) Both girls face thieves, government troops, and wild animals and eventually find themselves separated from their traveling companions and clinging to each other. Sahay, in spite of her initial fear that Rahel has the evil eye or may transform herself into a hyena, eventually becomes a guide to the blind Rahel, and the young Beta-Israeli girl reciprocates by telling stories her grandmother taught her, stories like that of Hirute and Nahomey (Ruth and Naomi), and Moses, who led the people out of slavery. Sahay muses about the things the two distinct ethnic groups share. MARCH 2020
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She was surprised at how many things she and Rahel had in common—not only the Sabbath but other feast days. And when they prayed, they both faced Jerusalem.
Rahel has found her way to the shabbiest area of the refugee settlement where the Beta-Israel have gathered, but most of the people who surround them seem to be waiting for death. Some of the refugees have even left to go back home to EthiPerhaps God really did bake opia to die. Both girls realize that despair your people and my people in and disease haunt the camp, and that to the same batch,… We seem to survive they must leave. know many of the same stories. Yet among the Beta-Israel, there are But there was a difference. The whispers about a night when they will be Kemant might have talked about given a signal. The old stories have foretold visiting Jerusalem, but I never that they would journey through Sudan to heard anyone say we would live Jerusalem. And when an old man whispers there some day. (126) in Rahel’s ear that this will be the night, Rahel tells him that Sahay, her sister, will When the group finally crosses the be going too. “I think perhaps you are like border into the Sudan, their troubles Hirute,” she tells Sahay since Hirute left are not over. The refugee camp, Umm Rekuba, has water but very little food for her own people to follow Nahomey back the many who live there. Sahay is not able to Israel, and in doing so she joins the to locate her uncle nor any other Kemant. family of David. Sahay wonders how she 30
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can give up the hope of finding her uncle or reuniting with her people, the Kemant. On the other hand, would she best honor them—her mother, father, sisters and cousins—by surviving? By the time the girls walk into the belly of what looks like a giant silver fish (a cargp plane), Sahay has decided that she will make Rahel her family. ‘The Kemant,’ Sahay finally said, ‘knowing all the things that can happen to a person’s family, have ways for people to make new kin, not of one’s own blood. People who are sisters and brothers by choice, not by kinship, are mahala.’ (131) The story of the two girls, Sahay and Rahel, speaks to all of us, not just those for whom the events of the eighties and early nineties are significant. We are
Place and displacement have always been central for me. A type of insecurity goes with that: you are always following the cues, like learning the dance steps when the dance is already under way.
all lonely wanderers on the earth. We TCKs feel this perhaps more keenly than others. During the final chapter, as the girls—cold, scared, and confused— huddle with so many others in the cargo hold of a giant airplane, a woman in military uniform gives them kind words, blankets, and strong, sweet coffee. The scene marks an ending and a beginning, grief for all that is gone and hope for all that is made new. The strange, sad hope lingered a long time in my imagination after I closed the book. Cheryl Skupa is an ATCK who has lived in Brazil, China, and the United States and who currently lives in the American heartland, teaching college English and writing mystery stories involving cross-cultural themes.
~Claire Messud MARCH 2020
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W
hen people ask me
where home is, the
answer is not auto-
matic. I have to take a second, and even when I think I’ve
made up my mind I
double back. Home
was not given to me; I’ve had to find it
for myself. Home is
where I am confident with my ideals and values. It is where memories and all
the essentials can be found and collected in togetherness.
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There’s No Place Like Home… But Where Would That Be?
By Emma Arden Farmer MARCH 2020
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Growing up, I have lived in four different countries. I was born in Budapest and moved north through Vienna before settling for the last eight years in Prague. I spent a very early year and a half in the US, and I return twice a year to visit. When I was younger, I would introduce myself as from the States, without question. Since my family hails from Arkansas, then I, too, must be from there. To six-year-old me, nothing seemed more logical. However, with age, the ability to wonder why grew within me and created my very own personal dilemma. My family’s habits were different than people raised in the same place. Was Europe my home because it is where I was born? Or was it the US because Arkansas was always a constant? What determines which one is superior, or do I live in perpetual limbo? From being immersed in distinct communities, I have been given the
opportunity to share the experience and knowledge I have accumulated with whomever. However, I can also conform to the needs of my surroundings. The demands of a European life can be the polar opposite of the expectations of American values. Moving between the two while connecting them at the same time is a skill that I have perfected. My persona has become the American in Europe and the European in America. While traveling between the two largelycontrasting societies, I’ve been able to bring habits and practices back and forth, which has slowly woven an intercultural bridge between the two. At an international school, this is not an uncommon trait for third-culture students to possess. My school in Prague is the capital of cultures joining together and rejoicing in their differences. In my more recent high school years, my Russian friends have taught me a card game,
Was Europe my home because it is where I was born? Or was it the US because Arkansas was always a constant? What determines which one is superior, or do I live in perpetual limbo?
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native to their country, called Durak. This short, logic- and strategy-ridden game spread around our school. I even managed to take it across the pond and teach it to my friends in Arkansas. Despite some initial consternation, Arkansas now has a little bit of Russia. Through the Duke of Edinburgh award program, we must complete an overnight hiking trip that corresponds with the award level we are attempting. On my first gold-level hike, my Arkansan culinary instincts, and the kindness of Czech countryside restaurant employees saved my group’s taste buds at the end of our long, arduous trek. We didn’t have ingredients for a typical “European” sauce, so I suggested we use butter for our spaghetti supper. My grandmother felt butter fixed just about everything, this situation included. Although my trek mates were initially skeptical, we unanimously asked for maslo (butter) from a
Czech waiter at a restaurant in Vojtechov. No plain pasta for us that night. It was a special day for our stomachs, and the Czech Republic had a bit of Arkansas. Who said home has to be where the house is? The addition of non-house places gives me infinite possibilities from which to choose my home. Looking ahead towards my future, I know that I can find the ties and familiarity of home elsewhere, especially as I head off to college next year. I know now that I determine how I define my home. Where I go is a decision for me, by me, for a home of my own. Emma Arden Farmer is a 17 year-old Arkansan girl who was born and raised in central Europe’s most treasured cities: Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. With each place competing for her heart, she’s found it difficult to name a single home. Applying to college means she is now tasked with finding a new home for herself and what she feels a home means to her.
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A Cracked Mug On Loss and Life
TO SEE THAT MUG CRACK MADE ME FEEL ALL OF LIFE’S CRACKS AND BROKEN PIECES. By Marilyn Gardner
the week she visited. It has been my routine wherever I’ve been in the world. It is a routine that easily transferred to my life in Kurdistan. While I can’t get the same coffee and my foam maker burnt out within a month, I’ve found substitutes and it has been a wonderful comfort as I adapt to life in Rania. Until this morning… As I poured the hot coffee into the ight years ago, my friend Mary gave me a giant mug as a hostess mug, it began leaking out the bottom. Startled, I ran for a saucer. There above gift. She had come from Egypt the coffee mark was the unmistakable to Boston for a conference, and sign of a crack, and clearly a deep one. our apartment in Cambridge provided I transferred the coffee to another cup a perfect place and easy access to the and took a look. The crack was beyond conference. The mug was not just any mug—it was from the Starbucks country repair. My beloved mug was finished. I would no longer be able to use it for my collection, or “You Are Here” mugs, so along with it being sixteen ounces, it also morning coffee. I sighed and then I cried. The tears fell had a picture of the pyramids and the freely, as if they’d been trapped too long word “Egypt” in large letters across it. and needed an excuse. In all of our lives, It quickly became my favorite mug. there are items we own that represent Curling up every morning with a homepeople, places, or events that are much made latte, a journal and pen in hand, is bigger than what you see on the surface. how I have started most mornings since
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This mug not only reminded me of one of my favorite places—it represented my life before Massachusetts. It reminded me of a world that was hidden, visible only through photo albums and occasional retelling of old stories, told a thousand times before. It reminded me that my life in Egypt was a significant period of time—a time of birthing babies and young motherhood, a time of learning what it was to live overseas as an adult, a time of joy with a growing family. It reminded me of my friendship with Mary, the one who gave me the mug. Mary was present at the births of my two youngest children. We were nurses together in Egypt and our kids spent hours playing together while we solved a good number of the world’s problems. To see that mug crack made me feel all of life’s cracks and broken pieces. I felt all over again the hurt of goodbyes and the long process of new hellos. I felt the stinging intensity of starting anew and the difficulty of keeping up friendships far away. I felt the sadness of living between worlds, the diaspora blues of being “too foreign for home, too foreign for here, never enough for both” (Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada). I felt the emptiness of lost friendships and the scars of ruined relationships. All of this came over me as I surveyed the spilt coffee and the cracked mug. I felt so, so sad. It’s now several hours later, and I still feel myself on the brink of tears. What I wish I could do with this old, beautiful Egypt mug is to mend it with gold, the Japanese art of kintsugi. Instead of throwing away the object that has cracked and broken, this restores the piece,
making it even more interesting and beautiful. The focus becomes the cracks and the scars. My mug deserves that sort of care, deserves to be an object of interest and pride, like a mended tea pot that I have owned for years and carried around the world. The teapot was broken into many pieces, but painstakingly mended with large metal clips and a metal bottom put on it to make it stronger. Though broken and having little of its original beauty, it is so much more interesting and represents so well the human condition. Despite the original break, despite the cracks, it continues to be useable and stronger than if it had never been broken. I won’t be able to do that, but I will keep the mug. Instead of using it every morning, sipping my morning coffee as I begin the day, I will put it on my desk. I will use it for pencils and pens—a repurposed memory bank. It deserves at least that. And, like the teapot, it will serve as a continual reminder that the circumstances in life can crack and mar us, but they don’t get to destroy. They don’t, and never will, have that kind of power. Marilyn Gardner, the former editor of Among Worlds, is an ATCK who grew up in Pakistan and has lived in Egypt, Kurdistan, and the United States.
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Where Will Among Worlds Take You? Among Worlds magazine is accepting submissions for upcoming issues. We are looking for original, high quality writing, poetry, photography, and visual pieces. We invite writers, poets, and artists to submit their work for consideration.
June 2020
Journeys: From Here to There and Back Again Submission deadline: April 30, 2020
September 2020
Releasing: Living Fully and Letting Go Submission deadline: July 30, 2020
